Chicken Party

The spouse is mildly addicted to the House Party website. It's kind of a weird site, where commercial companies offer stuff if you host a party to promote their products. There are a limited number of each party, so you apply, and you might get chosen, or you might not. The spouse has won a few, including one from Werther's, where they sent us bags and bags of candy, and now one from Foster Farms.

Luckily, they didn't mail us chicken. Instead, they gave us two $25 coupons, fourteen reusable shopping bags, a cookbook, and a chef's jacket. Amazingly, the jacket fit me almost perfectly. So, I added a picture of me in it to the blog. To pay for all the swag, however, you have to hold, and document, an actual get together.

So, the plan by the spouse was to have people over, and do lots of little dishes. We ended up settling on eight courses. Now, we both have been enamored of the concept of a tasting party for some time. The little dishes are really cute, and the spouse found some on sale cheap. Seemed like a good thing to try. We did a few old favorites, a few from the recipe book they sent, and few made up on the fly by me.

My goddaughter did yeoman duty as sou chef all day. She was a joy to work with, and I couldn't have pulled it off without her help. The spouse chipped in, as well as doing the bulk of scullery work keeping the pans clean throughout the day.



 For the first course, we went with a favorite cold dish; chicken, dried cranberry, and hazelnut salad. It has a great blend of tastes and textures, with chicken, dried cranberries, celery, nuts, yogurt, mayonnaise, honey, and herbs. I've done variations on this many times, and it works well with walnuts or almonds. You can also add a little diced granny smith apple, instead of the celery, for a little more tang.

I garnished it with a little micro basil from our CSA.

For the second course, we made a cold Asian chicken noodle salad. The chicken is marinated in the dressing, which has fresh ground peanut butter, fish sauce, soy sauce, chilies, garlic, and lime juice.  The chicken is then stir fried, and chilled. It's added to cold rice noodles along with fresh pea pods, and carrots. The noodles are dressed with the same sauce as the chicken was marinated in. It was garnished it with scallions, basil, and chopped peanuts.

For the third course, we made eggplant parmigiana with chicken Alfredo sauce. I had some beautiful white eggplant from my CSA. It was very firm, and quite mild. I breaded it with a mix of fine bread crumbs, shredded Parmesan, and Italian herbs. It was fried in very hot oil until brown and crisped, then placed in a 200 degree oven to keep warm. The goddaughter made the Alfredo sauce. It was a mix of butter, heavy cream, cream cheese, Parmesan cheese, and garlic with shredded grilled chicken. It was garnished with micro basil.

For the fourth course, we made pulled chicken in hoisin barbeque sauce with pickled cucumbers.and red onion. The chicken was cooked in a crockpot, then shredded. The BBQ sauce has hoisin sauce, garlic, apple cider vinegar, and soy sauce, The cucumber and onion are pickled in lemon juice and cider vinegar, flavored with clove, allspice, black pepper, and chili powder. It's served on a toasted Hawaiian sweet roll.

For the fifth course, we served hazelnut-sage chicken with ravioli.We used a mini ravioli. The chicken was sauteed with sage and lemon zest, and then tossed with the ravioli. It was garnished with chopped hazelnuts. The consensus among the cooks was that we should have used more zest, as the lemon just didn't come through.

For the sixth course, we made bacon wrapped chicken skewers with maple-pomegranate glaze with a pepper-zucchini slaw. Hard to go wrong with bacon, and the pomegranate molasses and maple syrup, with a hint of ginger, had a great sweet/sour thing going. The slaw, is a red wine vinaigrette, was garnished with pomegranate flavored dried cranberries. The acid in the slaw helped cut the fat of the bacon and the sweet of the glaze. I'm most proud of this one. I feel it was my most original of the day.

The seventh course was a miniature version of the lime marinated grilled chicken soft tacos I made earlier. We used mini corn tortillas here, and diced things smaller in proportion.

The final course was an old favorite, green chili chicken stew. A friend developed this recipe, and it is classic. Chicken, celery, carrots, and green chilies, with cumin just works beautifully. usually served over corn chips, I instead garnished it with fried tortilla strips. It was additionally garnished with shredded cheddar cheese.




Since this post is getting soooooo looong, I will end here, and post the recipes in a separate post.

Happy Eating!


Grilled Lime Chicken Soft Tacos and Mexican Rice

Our CSA has provided us with an abundance of peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos over the last few weeks, so I thought a good Mexican meal would help use up some of that. As well, a friend gave us a pile of limes from her tree as well. Some were what you expect limes to look like, small and green. A few, however, looked like lemons; large and yellow. Scratch them, and they smelled of lime.

The lime marinated chicken came out moist and tangy. I got a good sear, and great grill marks. Slicing it across the grain ensures that it will be tender. After turning of the gas to the grill, I used the residual heat to warm up the fresh corn tortillas from my local tortilleria.

I made salsa verde, which I love, with the tomatillos.  I had a pile of wonderful cherry tomatoes from the CSA, so diced those up. I had some mixed sweet peppers, no idea what varieties other than pale yellow, orange, and bright red. I grilled those, to get a nice char on the outside, and then sliced them in thin strips. I also included some chopped cilantro, sliced avocado, and a couple of lime wedges, just in case.

Instead of sour cream, I used fat free Greek yogurt. It works really well, having a great mouth feel and tang, and being healthier, to boot.

I am generally not a fan of Mexican rice, as served at most restaurants. I haven't worked out what they do, but there is always an off taste to me. So, I thought I'd try my own, see how it came out. I'd recently tried it in a rice cooker, and it was better flavor wise, but the texture was off.  I was determined to get it right.

My recipe is based on this one from the food.com website, which has an average rating of a smidge under 5 stars, with nearly 500 reviews. It deserves it! The method is flawless, most of my changes are out of frugality, the ingredients I had to hand, and preferred flavor profile. It produced the best Mexican rice I've ever had. Part of that may be ingredients.

For the tomato puree, I used a couple of largish yellow heirloom tomatoes, and 3 or 4 small red ones, all at the upper edge of usable ripeness. I used serranos instead of jalapenos, because that's what I had, but the flavor was great. I cut way back on the cilantro, as I didn't want it to be the dominant taste. Finally, I pureed the tomatoes and onion a little at a time to creep up to 2 cups, rather than make more than two cups and throw away the extra, as recommended in the original recipe. Just seemed wasteful to me. Rinsing the rice did seem to produce a wonderfully fluffy rice. I found that the aroma of the toasting rice was heavenly.

Recipes

Grilled Lime Chicken

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
zest of one large lime
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 cup water
1 tsp. dehydrated onion
1/2 tsp. dehydrated garlic
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1/4 tsp. cumin

Place all ingredients in a sealable storage bag. Remove as much air as possible. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Remove breasts from marinade, pat dry. Grill until done. Rest meat for 5 minutes, then slice thinly across the grain.

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa Verde

1/2 lb. tomatillos, hulled and washed
1 serrano chili
1 shallot, diced
1 Tblsp. diced cilantro
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
juice of 1/2 a small lime

Cut tomatillos in half; place cut side down on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Place under a low broiler until soft, and slightly browned, about 3 - 5 minutes.  Let cool. Roast serrano chili over a burner until charred. Cool, remove skin, seeds, and inner membranes. 

Place tomatillos, chili, cilantro, salt, and lime juice in a blender.  Blend on low until smooth.

Mexican Rice

8 -12 oz. ripe tomatoes, cored
1 small yellow onion, diced
3 serrano chilies
2 cups long grain white rice
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 Tblsp. minced garlic
2 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 Tblsp. chopped cilantro

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In a blender, process onion on, adding tomatoes a few at a time, until you have 2 cups puree.  Remove stems, seeds, and inner membranes from serrano chilies, then mince. Place rice in a strainer, and rinse until water runs clear, 1 - 2 minutes. In a large ceramic lined cast iron pot, heat vegetable oil over medium high heat for two minutes. And rice, fry about 8 minutes, until translucent and lightly toasted. Add garlic and serrano chilies, fry and addition couple of minutes. Turn heat down to medium low, and puree and stock. Just bring to a boil, then put on the lid, and place in oven. Bake about 25 minutes, until fully cooked.  Stir at the 15 minute mark to incorporate everything evenly.

Happy Eating!